HerbEly

Think You're Untouchable? Be Careful

    The scripture readings for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time turn on the healing power of touch. The importance of Jesus' touch is clear from considering the opposite: to be untouchable. In today’s culture the word “untouchable” has several meanings. We had a TV series about the Untouchables, law enforcement officers of high ethical standards who could not be “touched” or bribed. In other parts of the world “untouchable” referred to the lowest class of people. The religious attitude in Jesus’ time held that the sacred should be separated from the world. Ritual laws held that certain things should not be touched. If one touched a ritually unclean object a purification would be necessary before approaching the temple. Sometimes this was necessary. Burying a body was necessary - and a religious duty. However, ritual cleansing would be necessary.  

    There are two opposing spiritual traps here. The first is that, as a result of trying to live good lives, we begin to think of ourselves as “untouchable” - i.e we are incorruptible. Our view of self is that we are good persons and contact with bad persons will somehow render us unclean. The second, is that our self esteem is so low that we don’t believe anyone wants to touch us.

    Mark’s gospel (5:21-43) gives us a different perspective: Two linked cases in which Jesus is touched by a woman suffering from hemorrhages and in which he goes to touch a girl who has died. In both cases his touch is a healing one. Fully human, Jesus is aware of the sufferings of the woman, the girl and her parents. His touch is more than healing. It is transforming.

    There is a transforming lesson for all of us in this. We are all “touchable.” First, we are touchable in the sense that we can be induced to make ethical compromises. Second, with the aid of grace, we can become aware of our own weaknesses and shortcomings. As we do, we can recognize that these are capable of healing. 

    There is a way out of this. When he wrote Amazing Grace, John Newton got it right:

“Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved….”

Once we are aware of our own weakness can begin to accept the weakness in others and to extend to them a healing touch.

 

Lord, Don’t You Care that ….?

    On the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (June 21, 2015) the readings for Mass will include a selection from Job and Mark’s account of the disciples frightened by a sudden, squall breaking over their boat. In the first reading (Job 38:1, 8-11) the Lord answers Job, speaking from a storm. Here is Job, who has spent his life doing the right things and doing them right. In spite of this he loses everything and suffers. Refusing to admit that he has done anything wrong he demands an answer. His answer comes in verses omitted from the lectionary reading for the day.

3 Gird up your loins now, like a man; I will question you, and you tell me the answers! 

4 Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

5 Who determined its size? Surely you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it?

It is not for Job to know. God has plans for him and Job must learn trust and acceptance.

    In the gospel reading (Mk 4:35-41) the disciples are again doing the right thing and doing it right. They are experienced sailors, traveling with the Lord. Yet they find themselves in the midst of a life threatening storm. Even their sailor’s skill will not save them. Even worse, their suffering continues just as Job’s did, until they are mortally afraid. Then:

They woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

They are filled with awe, when He wakes, rebukes the wind and orders the sea to “Be Still.”

    So it is for many of us. We are going through life doing what we think we are supposed to do and doing it well. Life is good and were are happy. Then a storm comes and we say to the Lord: Where are you? I’m doing my job. Why don’t you help? Don’t you care? The answer is that, of course the Lord cares - but we should not be so sure that we are doing the right thing and doing it well. Sometimes it takes a storm for us to finally learn that we are not in charge of our own lives.

 

From Unwanted Baby Girl to City of Shame to City of Shelter and Splendor

    The first reading for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time (June 7, 2015) is taken from Ez 17 and describes how Jerusalem will be taken as a tender shoot of cedar and become a majestic tree sheltering birds of every kind. This is a comforting and hopeful image. The picture of “birds of every kind” tells us that all nations - foreign and pagan - will be sheltered and at peace.

    If we look at the preceding texts in Ezekiel 16 and 17 we get a much more dramatic picture. Ez 16:1-14 portrays Jerusalem as an newborn infant whose parents exposed her in the wilderness so that she would die. The Lord however protected her and she grew into a desirable young woman. The Lord covered her with his garment - taking her as a bride - and made her into a beautiful queen. Ez 16:1-14 is IMO, the most vivid, explicit and passionate image of God's love:

16 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices 3 and say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. 4 On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. 5 No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.

6 “‘Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!”7 I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew and developed and entered puberty. Your breasts had formed and your hair had grown, yet you were stark naked.

8 “‘Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your naked body. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.

9 “‘I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. 10 I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put sandals of fine leather on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. 11 I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace  around your neck, 12 and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. 13 So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was honey, olive oil and the finest flour. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. 14 And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord.

     Jerusalem, however, deserted the Lord by worshiping the gods of alien nations. The Lord, as a hurt lover, compares this betrayal as prostitution. Jerusalem becomes a city of shame. 

    Yet all is not lost. Then in Ex. 16:60 we read that:

 “But I will remember the covenant I made with you when you were young; I will set up an everlasting covenant* with you.”

Ezekiel’s vision promises that eventually Jerusalem’s disgrace will be removed. In our first reading (Ez 17:22-24) Jerusalem is compared to a tender shoot of cedar, planted on a high mountain:

“It shall put forth branches and bear fruit, and become a majestic cedar.

Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it, every winged thing in the shade of its boughs….”

The gospel reading (Mk. 4:26-34) will take up a similar image. The smallest of seeds - a mustard seed - becomes a short of shelter so that birds of the sky can be sheltered in its shade.

    This is, IMO, the bible’s most dramatic story of rescue and redemption. God’s love for Jerusalem is portrayed in intimate, passionate sexual imagery. Even as lover scorned and betrayed, God remembers his covenant, Jerusalem is not just restored to her former glory. She becomes a city in which all can live in peace and be restored to intimate relationships with the Lord.

Yogi, It is Over

    The second reading on the feast of Corpus Christi  (June 7) reminds me of a saying attributed to Yogi Berra - “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

     The scripture readings for the day emphasize the Covenant made with Moses and sealed with the blood sacrifice of bulls. (Ex 24:3-8). In the gospel (Mk 14:12-16, 22-26) Jesus recalls this sealing and tells the apostles that his blood will seal the covenant for the multitude. 

    What is the impact of this on our personal lives? lIt is in the second reading (Heb 9:11-15) that we can find the impact: 

“how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.”

These works are past deeds that remain on our consciences, dragging us down and preventing us from making changes in our lives. The author of Hebrews tells us that our consciences are cleansed.  Once we accept this we will reach a point where we do not regret the past but can leave the door open to any lessons it may have to teach us. 

    As we learn, our past will not change, but our attitudes toward it can change fundamentally. As C.S. Lewis puts it in The Great Divorce:

“Son,'he said,' ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why...the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.”

Yogi said that “it ain’t over till it’s over.” For some people the past is never over. It is a continuing source of regret and resentment. My reading of Hebrew tells me with a cleansed conscience the past is really over.  Actually it is more than that: with a new conscience we can see the past as a starting point on the path to heaven.